Organising local partnerships

Chapter 1
From programme management to the
coordination of local development

1.3 The same trend towards opening up

In all cases, the same trend towards opening the partnership to other types of
partners can be noted, particularly in the long term. In other words, the general
trend is to extend the partnership towards one comprising both private and public actors.

Several reasons are behind this will to open up:

the search for legitimacy (particularly if this involves an initiative of
people or private institutions);

the search for consensus to avoid conflicts within the area;

the search to widen the field of skills and awareness. Diversity can in fact
be a guarantee of success because it is from this that stem creativity, innovation
and proliferation of ideas and solutions.

In actual fact, opening up the partnership is not left to chance: depending
on where the initiators come from but also on other factors, the groups build a
specific and suitable partnership. sometimes they are forced to open up to partners
of different origins, and the action's objectives and content have to evolve or even
change. This may eventually lead to a "variable geometry" of the partnership,
depending on five types of concerns:

the usefulness in achieving the objectives that have been set;

the interest in the expected results;

the efficiency needed to successfully carry off the actions planned;

the motivation required to take charge of the projects;

adaptation to the developments imposed by the durability of the action.

In the long term, the successful partnership then appears as the dynamic
aspect of the development approach, with the ability to mobilise local human
resources, even though the forms it takes are impregnated with its specific origin
and national traditions.

It therefore seems evident that in spite of these circumstantial factors
(capacity of the initiator, local history, etc.), the partnership must progressively
integrate in the course of its construction the needs of the development action that
it underlies; it must therefore evolve and adapt to the different stages of this to
guarantee its durability.

The following table summarises for each stage of the development action the
characteristics encountered in practice at partnership level.

Necessarily schematic, this table must be easily adaptable to the different
practical cases of which it is a synthesis. However, it shows that in spite of a
specific entry for each type of initiator (a limited number of people initiate the
approach), the public authorities become involved from stage 3 and the individual or
collective project holders from stage 4. Gradually, therefore, the partnership expands
under pressure from the needs of the development action and in order to respond to the
five concerns previously mentioned (usefulness, interest, efficiency, motivation,
adaptation).

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

1
Initialise
Detect
Mobilise

2
Discuss
Position oneself
Propose

3
Validate
Schedule
Finance

4
Assemble
Carry out
Monitor

5
Evaluate
Adapt
Relaunch

NATURE

OF

THE

PA
RTNERSHIP

Essentialpartners

A limited number of people or organisations involved

Institutional and professional representatives, people-resources from society

Financiers and investors, Banks and managers, various government agencies

Individual or collective project holders

Direct and indirect participants from an area and from production networks

Form oforganisation

Informal organisation based on voluntary support

Working parties based on objectives or themes

Institutional dialogue based on agreement

Personal commitment based on an obligation to achieve a result and on the contract

Strategic group based on identifying and seeking the common good

Origins of thedynamism

Militancyusefulness

Cooperationinterest

Expertiseefficiency

Responsibilitymotivation

Integrationcitizenship

Curbs and limitsassociated withcomposition

Spontaneous initiative, sometimes taken badly by the institutions and/or the community.
Fragility due to the limited number of people involved

Corporatist pressures and takeover by the institutions or specific sectors of activity

Limitation to institutional logics and financial constraints

Suffocation in a project dynamic running out of steam

Dilution of the action and lack of notable interest for global actions

Phases 2 and 5 of development, essential to the maturity and durability of
the action, are not, or are only rarely, entries because they are phases that
are not directly productive whose value and necessity become apparent only with
time and by preventing the pressure of "doing" from eclipsing the question "why
are we doing this?": allowance for the time factor (long term) and the area
(identity, culture), the need for a strategy (anticipation) and the value of
evaluating and remobilising (appropriation) are all discoveries which are not
immediately apparent but which form the ultimate value of the partnership and
ensure its durability.